North Korea launches charm offensive, exports monumental art to long-time ally Cambodia
Hardline communist state builds a US$24 million museum honouring feudal Southeast Asian dynasty – proof that the two countries’ relations remain strong even as Pyongyang deepens its pariah status
In a vast parking lot outside Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat temples complex stands a new museum built by North Korea, part of a lucrative charm offensive by a hermit state exporting its monumental art to a handful of foreign allies.
“When people come here sometimes they cannot believe their eyes,” said Yit Chandaroat, of the Angkor Panorama Museum, which opened in December after a construction process shrouded in secrecy.
“They really feel like they are back in the time of Angkor,” he added, referring to the world heritage site which comprises the remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, dating from the 9th to the 15th centuries.
Behind him stands the museum’s piece de resistance, an enormous 360-degree panorama that 63 North Korean painters from the state-owned Mansudae Art Studio toiled away on for more than a year. The mural, epic in scale and intricate in detail, covers an area larger than eight tennis courts and reflects the sweeping grandiosity for which Pyongyang’s artists are renowned.
But this is no socialist realist tribute to North Korea’s ‘Dear Leaders’. Instead the paintings portray the battles of the fearsome Khmer Empire at the apogee of its power in the 11th and 13th centuries and the construction of Angkor Wat.
That a closed, hardline communist state might choose to build a museum honouring a feudal Southeast Asian dynasty – and foot the US$24 million price tag – may initially appear surprising.